Lonely Assassin
by WeepingAngelXIII
Summary: A short story in which the 2007 episode "Blink" of Doctor Who is retold by one of the Weeping Angel quartet.


An Angel: that's what I am to all races, but I am far from angelic in reality. I stand out of sight and have the perfect disguise. We don't speak; we communicate with thought, and feed off the time energy of others. Our disguise prevents hurt (you can't kill stone), but it is also our greatest curse. If any living creature lays its eyes on us we freeze into rock. We've never looked upon each other for that reason. People call us Weeping Angels because we look like we are crying. That is not why we cover our eyes. We can't bear to look at each other either. Our greatest asset is also our greatest weakness. That is why I am standing here now, staring forever into the eyes of my sibling: forever frozen in stone. As long as I am here, looking at a fellow Angel, I froze him and he froze me. As long as either of us remains standing here neither of us will ever be able to move again... Ever...

We feed of time energy. That's what gives us purpose. It keeps us living. We'd arrived on earth and remained them for a few years before He came. We did not know who he was until we approached him. There was a girl with him, and it was all too easy, for when they weren't looking, to reach out and to touch. One touch is all it takes: the touch of an Angel.

You'd know when a Weeping Angel touched you. It would disorientate you and you would disappear from your old life. We don't kill, no; not directly at any rate. We let time have that honour. Sending someone into the past allows them to live out another life, whilst we absorb the days and life they could have had in the present: potential energy. There would always be disappearances but the good thing was though, if anyone traced the people we took to the old Wester Drumlins house, no one thinks twice about that old stone statue in the garden...

He was different from the others though: that Traveller. There was so much life in him. He was not human, I had known that for a time, but what was he? Had I not known of the demise of the Time Lords I may even have dared to suggest that he was one of them. But still, there were four of us in total: the four Angels. We lived in that house, far from anything living, but people always came to us. The man full of time and life, he had a supply of energy to us that was greater than anything we could have thought of on this world. The girl went first though. She was easy, but then he seemed to have realised what we were, but there being four of us to his one, I took a key from his pocket and sent him to join his companion.

That key was special; otherwise I would not have taken it. The others knew it too. I covered my own eyes with my free arm to allow them to see it, but for a time we did not know what to do with it. Other humans had arrived to take away his things, but we could not as yet have stopped them. With too many at once there are too many eyes. We had to find out where they had taken that box: a box full of enough temporal energy with the power to turn off the sun! We needed it, but how to get it was a difficult situation. In a world with so many eyes, how can an Angel pass unobserved? Then the girl ended up here. She came alone the first time, or so I was told. One of my siblings stood guard in the garden of the old house. We took it in turns however to watch anyone who entered the garden, but this girl was unimportant (at least that was what we thought at the time).

Yet she returned to the house the next day, although this time accompanied by another girl. One of my siblings in the garden feared that my actions in sending the Traveller and his companion back through thirty-eight Earth years had alerted this girl to our presence. However, she did not seem too dangerous to me. Not at that time. But she stole the key from us. She had answered a door with a man standing there, and my sibling in the garden chose to take the other away from her life in 2007. The girl was upset about the sudden disappearance of her friend and searched the house fervently for her. We barely rely on our eyes do we Angels. All too often they can betray us. We ourselves are living things, so therefore our quantum-lock applies even to our own race. However you can sense the moment eyes are laid on you. Our flesh becomes stone. It is constricting, and we can no longer move. I heard her approach me and felt her take the Traveller's key from my stone fingers. I was angry and just wanted her to turn away, let me move, and the moment she did I reached out, but not quickly enough. She called out and ran back down the stairs as my hand touched the point where her shoulder had been. She left her house as we watched her go from the windows of our house and two of us decided to follow her in order to see if she could lead us to the ship for which she had the key: this cradle of life.

We followed her everywhere she went. We watched her as she sat in a cafe, crying over the loss of her friend. We watched her as she went to a cemetery to see the grave. We followed her as she went into town, into shops, even to the police station. We knew then we would be able to find that box. Moving in the moments where onlookers would blink, we headed in through the station, and sure enough it was there: that magnificent blue box. The two of us called for the others before any of the humans knew we were they and they came to us. We stayed out of sight, moving when the humans looked away, surrounding the box, and then one turned around. He was puzzled by our presence. He was obviously wondering where the Angel statues had come from and why they were here. Humans are too curious for their own good though. He came to look. He came right up to my face, so close to me. I wished for that tiny moment, one nanosecond when nothing saw me. Just ... blink... and he was mine.

When I had removed him from this time, the four of us set to work, taking the box away with us, back to our old house, but the same problem existed. We had only half the puzzle. That girl still had the key. We just needed to take it away and then... all that temporal and potential energy was ours for the taking. But if the girl was wise she would stay away from us now. We needed that key. The box refused to open without it. We could not see what to do. But she returned.

Out of curiosity or drawn back for some unknown purpose she returned accompanied by another: a male of the species. I saw them. It was my turn to stand in the garden, but it is interesting how unobservant the humans can be. They cannot tell the difference between us. The four of us regularly change places around the house, but we are still left unnoticed by the humans. My hands were held over my eyes but I could hear everything they said. Then I heard his voice... The Traveller? He was here? But no: it was merely a recording of his voice. He told them about us: what we were, our names, where we came from, our quantum-locking defences, and what we wanted with that box of his. He couldn't... I wanted to silence him, or stop the others from listening, but I couldn't. Someone was looking at me. I silently commanded him to turn away, to stop looking, and then I could silence them all. The Traveller stopped speaking and I felt my flesh return to its original state. I dived forward across the garden and through the window, silently snarling. I had to end this now. But they looked back and inches away from them, by skin became stone and I froze, a snarling angel, only a foot away. Both recoiled and kept their eyes glued on me, but I knew something they didn't. I had heard my siblings move from upstairs. They had locked the doors. There was no escape for them now.

The girl ran off down the hall towards the door, leaving the young man with me. He was afraid of me; I could see it in his eyes. He looked almost too scared to blink, but I needed him to. He just had to look away, turn his head, even blink, and then I could move again. He became increasingly more agitated as we stood facing each other, clearly aware of the presence of my siblings in the house. He was evidentially afraid of their approach behind him. He began to shake, his eyelids flickering but never closing. His head twitched slightly as he seemed to want to look behind him. Of course, had he been thinking straight he would have realised that my siblings could not have come behind him. I could see openly down the corridor, my hands reaching towards the point where they had been and not covering my eyes. Anything that came down that corridor would have to have been observed by me; therefore no Angel could have touched him... so long as he kept his eyes on me that was. He stood there shaking, fighting the urge to look behind him. Just look, I kept thinking. Turn your back... and he did, but it wasn't quite long enough. I had taken the half second to jump across the room, but he had looked back before I had time to run any further. He screamed as he registered the inch between our faces, and I just wished he'd blink. We were so close that would do it. His eyes were beginning to water and close. Yes. Go on. Then the girl arrived back. That kept me still. The two of them fled to the basement, and I flew down the hall after them. My siblings were waiting in the basement with the blue box, pulsing with so much energy. I followed them down the stairs and raised my arm to the bulb hanging from the ceiling. If I could just... Then the girl turned.

We have power though, even when frozen in rock. I had the power to turn off the lights. At least that was what I had attempted to do. The lights flickered in and out of darkness allowing the four of us the ability to advance to the box. The girl realised what I had done and fumbled with her stolen key to get herself in to that box, but she was lucky. She made it in just as I reached the door. It wouldn't let us in. We had to get her out. She had that key. That box could do so much. We needed it. Each of the four of us took hold of a side of the box and threw it around. She could not bear much more of this. She would have to come out and then we would have our key. But he tricked us, the Traveller. The box vanished and left us standing in a circle, staring straight into the eyes of another Angel. Neither of us could move so neither could cover their eyes. We were trapped forever in a prison of our own biology. The stone had caged us and there was nothing we could do.

They call us Lonely Assassins, and with good reason. We can never look at each other because of our quantum-lock, and that has left us trapped like this, standing in a basement for three Earth years now. There is little to do when you cannot move, save think and recount. It is not a good feeling to be like this, encased in stone, but it is the fate of a Weeping Angel. I have never cried in my life, and I have lived for millennia. For the first time in my life I have felt like crying if I could, but there is nothing left I can do. Lonely Assassin: frozen in thought. And because of the Traveller I'll never move again.


End file.
